The Age of Chivalry - The Story of England

Collins 1963 OR The Reprint Society 1963

The second volume of Bryant's Story of England covers the high Middle Age - the century and more between the reigns of Edward I and Richard II. When it began England was still an integral part of Latin Christendom, sharing its beliefs, its religious and to an extent, its secular institutions. Her governing classes spoke French, her educated folk Latin; wide tracts of the continent received her rule and continental Europeans participated in her government. During this time many of her distinguishing characteristics as a nation emerged - parliament, the legal profession, her system of land tenure and local government, the lovely indigenous modification of Gothic architecture known as Perpendicular, and the popular speech which, cross-bred from many others, became, in the hands of native writers of genius, the instrument of great literature. It saw the attempt to unify Anglo-Saxon and Celtic Britain under a single law and monarchy - successful, after a heroic resistance, in Wales but in Scotland defeated in a war of independence that ensured the continued nationhood of the Scottish people. It was the age of Arthurian chivalry, a Bannockburn defeat, a Crecy victory, the Black Death and the Peasants' Revolt....